Aaaaaaaargh, matey…

So the MPAA brought their latest round of lawsuits today, moving from movies to TV and attacking six of the big sites that let users download TV shows using BitTorrent. They can’t actually go after the makers of the BitTorrent software (unless the Supreme Court does something drastic next month when their expected Grokster decision comes down), and they can’t really stop the actual TV show copies from being out there, so all they can do is go after sites like the six they just attacked, which basically index the available shows.

As is always the case in the age of internet piracy, these tactics slow things down a little, but they don’t really stop anything. That’s particularly the case with BitTorrent, since the infringing/pirate/illegal/what-shall-you material is still out there in droves. (By way of contrast, when the RIAA went after Napster, some clever folks had to come up with new technological methods of sharing files before file-swapping could really pick back up again).

I’ll put it this way. In theory, I may have been a frequent user of one of the six attacked sites. Now that this site is down, this hypothetical-me would need to spend all of three minutes to find four alternative sites offering indexes/access to the same files.

A lot of folks out there have been downloading TV shows through BitTorrent, which is how it got on the MPAA’s radar. Now, maybe if they were to offer a comparable service, folks would flock to it. Remember how Napster and internet music piracy was going to ruin the record industry? And now iTunes is popular as all-can-do? There’s probably a lesson in there for the MPAA.

Look, if I could pay a buck or two to download a TV show to watch on my next plane ride, I would do so. But since that’s not an option, when I take my next flight, I’ll just have to fire up one of the BitTorrent sites that hasn’t been sued yet and download whatever in-flight entertainment I want. In theory and hypothetically, of course.